Google is starting to eat Apple's lunch on mobile phones and will do so on the desktop/laptop/tablet if they try to exert such tight control over what their users do on their larger devices. They got away with it on the mobile phones because their interface was so far ahead of anyone else when they got started.

Google is starting to eat Apple's lunch on mobile phones and will do so on the desktop/laptop/tablet if they try to exert such tight control over what their users do on their larger devices. They got away with it on the mobile phones because their interface was so far ahead of anyone else when they got started.

Different business models. Android is aiming for it to be installed on everything, so the Android device market is not designed to be a high margin businesses. Since there are no iOS makers except iPhone, they charge what they want and people are forced to pay. Their net profits has exceeded that of the Android market this past year despite a smaller market share. As long as what Apple disciples are willing to pay allows them to net more money than an open system, there's no incentive for them to change business models.

If Apple's market share shrinks to the point that serious handheld app developers no longer feel to make an iPhone version of their apps at all, maybe at that point Apple would be forced to switch, but until then, they're raking in the bucks.

Fair point. But the same could have been said (and probably was) about IBM and the clone manufacturers at various points in the intel-based PC industry. The fact that there are a couple of significant players and several smaller ones give the Android marketplace a level of survivability that a single competitor would not have. Also Android reduces the hight of the entry barriers, making it easier for new wannabe competitors to join the game.

And when consumers discovers that there are devices that can do more than what their iPhone does - and maybe even better - then they will move. People changes phones almost at the same rate as they change their underwear.

Yes, but dumb phones are also very generic, you use a different one like you'd use a different brand of car. I think people are far more reluctant to change between an iPhone and Blackberry and Android phone that they've learned to do lots of different things on, have a bunch of apps on and so on.

My wife and daughter just got Android phones on Sprint for $40 each, and they're running 2.2 (the latest) and are really good phones (slideout keyboard alone makes them superior to iPhone). I'm pretty sure you can't get an iPhone for $40. The latest OS iPhone is $199 minimum, and it doesn't even have a keyboard. And you have to be on the crappiest carrier in the US.

Still Apple makes $300 a unit vs maybe $100 per Android device if they aren't on buy one get one free special

True in terms of hardware cost, but Apple's $300 has to fund iOS development, while an Android handset maker's $100 is pure profit.

Of course, Apple doesn't actually have to spend much developing iOS, because it's not very different from OS X (UIKit is a butchered AppKit, and everything else in iOS is also in OS X), so they get to subsidise the iOS development costs from Mac sales. This is probably one of the reasons for Microsoft's decision to port Windows 8 to ARM - if they can just maintain one codeba

Not necessarily. I don't want AT&T no matter what. My friend, who is die hard Apple freak, is sick and tired of AT&T he's considering moving to Droid X on Verizon, just to get off AT&T, the only reason he hasn't is continued rumors of iPhone on VZ. However, rumors aren't going to keep him on AT&T much longer.

I've known too many people who are sick of AT&T. Job's RDF doesn't extend to that far.

In the very end , the manufacturer are not given the CHOICE of using iOS. And the market share of the Operating system iOS and Android doesn't have to be interpreted differently. The bottom line is that if in the end the market share of Android is much greater than the one of apple (and long term I think it will if only by the virtue it is available for everybody) then developper will migrate to where they can get a greater market share for their apps (or do both market). This is also the reason why even if

We need to remember, it's Apple on AT&T vs. Google on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and just about everyone else. I think you are going to see a sea of people go with the iPhone once it is available on Verizon.

Also, Android is the less expensive option. There are regular 2 for 1 deals... and also crazy 29.99 deals with Google. You just aren't going to see that with the iPhone.

"Eating someone's lunch" is a rather ambiguous phrase, so I don't know why you're being so contrary. Hell, I even qualified it with "starting to". If all you're saying is that Android's rise has hurt MS & RIM more than Apple, well then we have no disagreement. But I suggest that most of those lost Windows Phone and Blackberry users would have gotten an iPhone if Android hadn't come on so strong. Which of these trend lines do you think Apple would prefer to have? Android has not leveled off. In fact, Nielsen shows it increasing.

Google (Android), per comScore, passed Apple (iOS) as #2 in total active smartphone subscribers. (Still trails Blackberry, though if Android climbs and Blackberry falls in the next quarter at the same rate, Android will be #1 and Blackberry and iOS will be number #2.)

Now, comScore may overstate Google's position (Nielsen, for instance, has Apple ahead of Google -- and RIM -- with Google predicted to take the number 1 slot in Q1 2011), but pretty much all sources have Android growing fast, and on the verge of passing Apple in the smartphone market if not actually ahead.

It's sales also leveled off a few months ago.

Well, no. The Apple Insider forum post you link to interprets an 8% increase in the daily activation rate between August and October as a sign that the activation rate has reached a "plateau", but increasing by 8% in two months is not a plateau. It might be a reduction in the previous rate of increase, but an 8% increase in two months is a 58% annualized rate of increase, which is pretty far from flat.

Its not surprising that Apple Insider distorts things in that direction, of course, but it is a distortion, and not a particularly subtle one.

I mean, the dude said Android was "eating Apple's lunch" and it was, like, ON.

You can't be disrespecting Apple like that. It's just not cool to talk smack about Apple when their shit is like, the shit.

It's OK... I'm alright now. Just don't come with that weak-ass Android shit because you should just take that shit to the park 'cause maybe the squirrels give a fuck, but it's just not cool to disrespect Apple. Like, at all. Claro?

Market share matters. If you only have the resources to develop for one platform then you'll develop for the biggest. Previously it was Apple and now it is Android. Apple pissing potential developers off (within inferior Objective-C compared to Java, and crappy licensing) means they will lose money in phones just as they once did in PCs. Apple need to relax in order to 'win', they didn't learn from "In order for Microsoft to win the Customer must lose". It took a long time but it did happen for Microsoft (p

Ironic that Apple has become the Big Brother they depicted in the original 1984 Macintosh ad. Then again Steve Jobs was always a control freak. Sealed all-in-one Macs with little upgrade options was his thing. When he left, the Mac II with slots showed up.

I can get access through three different DSL providers, through cable, through satellite, through five different mobile operators, through my neighbour's wifi, and I haven't even looked at setting up a village wide network, negotiating my own peering arrangements, installing my own cables, internet through powerlines or moving house.

You may have slightly less choice in DSL providers and mobile operators, but you are definitely artificially constraining your internet access option

Erich Fromm wrote an interesting essay that was included as an afterword to some editions of 1984 where he argues that the concept of doublethink can be found just as easily in corporate culture as it can in government. And it's not surprising -- big government, big business, and big media are so incestuous it's often difficult to draw lines of clear distinction among them.

So, the summary conveniently "forgets" that the app was pulled *at the
request of one of the VLC developers themselves* due to a licence
compatibility issue.

It's up to the *distributor* (ie Apple) to make sure that their license terms don't break the GPL. That's the price for the privilege of distributing the software. Just because they're a big company doesn't absolve them from following the rules.

Free Software is perfectly compatible with the iPod. It's just not compatible with the Apple Store.

That is by design. That's Apple's fault.

That should worry everyone, especially Apple users.

Free software distributed under nearly any free software license other than GPL is compatible with the Apple Store. It is only free software that uses the most restrictive free software license available that runs into trouble.

And note this has nothing to do with the GPL being a copyleft license. There are free software copyleft licenses compatible with the Apple Store.

Free software is compatible with the AppStore. Heck, the App Store is even compatible with Open Source. This is all just the result of one whiny developer that decided he hated iOS and decided to make it his personal project to toss a low punch at both, iOS owners and MobileVLC developers by arguing over terms of use.

Rémi Denis-Courmont says he has no sympathy for no one affected by this. But what can you expect from a Nokia software engineer. [remlab.net] Objectivity is the last thing I would expect from someone in such a position. I would like to know what is the opinion of the rest of the VLC development team.

This is pretty wrong. I know it's pretty trollish, but I feel compelled to respond.

computers that can last longer and be cheaper

Trend is actually to computers that are cheaper and more disposable. Once upon a time more companies were trying to release more reliable machines, but the costs were high - Enter Dell, eMachines, Acer and Gateway (the latter three now one and the same), and their business models of inexpensive PC's that aren't necessarily solid broke the market entirely. Computers are becoming disposable, much in the same way mobile phones are.

Used computer market is now becoming HUGE....because no one can afford to retail prices.

Retail prices on PC's have been plummeting for a long time now, and the used computer market is inflating due to the above point: Computers are becoming disposable, and there are even cases where people will toss a computer because of something like a spyware or virus infection.

iPAD subscriptions have taken a complete nose dive of late as people realize how useless and costly the things are

While I never understood the point behind the iPad, its impact on the market in general is undeniable, with Android tablets mimicking its design appearing left and right. Many emerging and future hybrid designs are coming out as iPad-style tablets proper, with a fully-equipped base station featuring a keyboard, mouse, ethernet/display ports, and so on. I know that our provincial government has become very interested in developments by Toshiba in this regard, and may be procuring them to replace laptops in the future.

I want to address the most glaring part last:

too late once open source is OUT into peoples hands its too late.YOU can't then take it away.

Yeah you can. If, say, Apple decided they wanted to lock down their devices, they could first-off modify their EFI implementation to disable the loading of unsigned (by Apple) software as an operating system. That in itself would disable flavours of Linux from loading, and they could go further still by modifying their operating system to support installation of applications only via their App Store. The beautiful thing is that newer Apple products, both hardware and software, can use a different encryption key for their EFI-OS lockout. Or, they could utilize technology like this:

There exists a real-world potential for such a thing to exist - Microsoft has for a long time been on-again off-again working on something formerly called Palladium, now called Next-Generation Secure Computing Base [wikipedia.org], which is an implementation of the concept of trusted computing. At the time when this was announced, many thought of this as perhaps being the death of Linux - One major use for this kind of technology is for DRM purposes, wherein only an approved application can access certain data, which could feasibly include the entire system. The hardware required for this kind of thing has been around for a while, and many machines since the AM2/LGA-775 sockets have Trusted Platform Module chips included. One of the more famous applications for this is with Bitlocker.

I was a Mac user until recently, and an Apple II user before I started with Macs. But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior.

All I ask is that the device I pay for allow me to use it as I please instead of requiring the company's permission for each little chunk of code that executes. Give me just that and I'll be happy to buy.

I agree with you, however that is not what many people want. There are enough people who want to only be able to run software that has been vetted by someone to support Apple, Microsoft and everyone else who chooses to follow this behavior. Just accept that the iOS platform is not for you and move on.

The shame is that the companies seem to feel that it's an all or nothing choice. Flash up a big red warning that states "Unsupported software" if you must, but give me the option to use the hardware freely.

That could, and should, be two levels of product support. The Basic, "here's a working machine, good luck, we'll return it to this state if you want us to" and the Advanced, "here is a machine tuned to work a lot of apps, according to our sensibilities". Most auto manufacturers offered this two-tiered approach during the Golden Age of Detroit. The luxo makers probably still do.

Jailbreak. Do what you want. Face the reality. Their needs to be a high barrier to being able to do anything with your phone. The average person can not tell legitimate software from a keylogger if you write the word "free" on it. Jailbreaking puts a barrier to ensure only technical people do anything with their phone. And Apple doesn't get a phone call from your grandma cause she installed solitaire and it rooted her phone and stole her identity. Everybody wins!

Most iPhone users don't even know what VLC is or care for that matter. The build in media player works fine for pretty much any digital download supplied with DVD's and Blu-Ray, as well any number of h.264 compatible profiles.

One of the developers, Rémi Denis-Courmont, was calling on Apple to allow users to use VLC in the manner that the GPL requires. However Apple decided that they would rather remove VLC from the repository than modify their ToS to allow developers to set their own licensing terms.

And Apple can't fix anything by modifying an agreement, as it's not their license that's in question, it's the GPL. They'd actually have to restructure how their content distribution system works.

Nonsense. The problem is a licensing problem, not a content distribution problem. If Apple would fix their licenses, the problem would go away, even if their app store couldn't actually implement the more permissilve licenses.

Apple, not (merely) Applidium violated the license. They're distributing the software, after all. Even with the most positive spin possible you could merely argue they're just a bulk-distributor and not liable as long as they honor take-downs, but even that argument is dubious: after all, they manually approve apps, so it's hard to argue they don't control what "users" (such as Applidium) post.

It is the submitters responsibility to make sure they have the right to put the software they submit into the AppStore. Apple does not take any license agreement documents from you when you submit, they just warn you that you must be the owner of the stuff you put there. If licensing or copyright issues emerge, the app will be taken down and the publisher may suffer penalties.

If there is any issue with the license, the developers should had found them, not Apple.

I was a Mac user until recently, and an Apple II user before I started with Macs. But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior.

What behaviour? You mean the behaviour of a developer who is so desparate to defend user's freedom that he even prevents them from using the software in the first place?

What would be really fun would be to take the guy to court to get a declaratory judgement that publishing a GPL licensed application on the app store is _not_ in violation of the GPL and therefore not copyright infringement.

I was a VLC user until recently. But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior. Ohh, and the bugs with missing audio in some MPEG2 files that no other player has, and that they haven't been able to fix for the last couple of years.

I'm a dedicated linux user for the past 5 years and I'm thinking of dumping it all and going to macs.

I spend way too much time fiddling and screwing around trying to get normal things to work. The other day for example my wife wanted a sound to come on when she got an email in thunderbird. Should be easy, no? Doesn't work on ubuntu without some serious googling/screwing around. Google earth which for some reason vanished from the medibuntu repository... same deal. For some reason the installer set the symlink to point somewhere else. And still the fonts are screwed up, don't know why.

Or one of my favorites? Kdenlive, a great video editor, can't export to h.264 out of the box on ubuntu because it uses lame so you have to put your own custom export in. Or a recent clean install of Kubuntu 10.10 that left the master mixing channel muted (not through kmix but through alsamixer). Or the fact that the newest ubuntu amarok packages kill it's ability to talk to my wife's ipod. On and on. I'm not pointing fingers here, the devs and packagers do a fab job for the most part but it's always just shy of the goal line it seems.

Look, I loves me linux, but I have 3 kids, a wife, a job, and a life. And I won't do windows not for the least part because of the safety factor for my kids and wife not downloading shite. So do I want to come home from my IT job and have a nice safe controlled environment for my wife and kids to hop on, do email, surf the web, etc in a reasonably safe way where I don't need to spend hours on end fiddling when something doesn't work? Sounds f'ing great to me.

Simply not true. I'm both. A linux user and embedded firmware developer so for the most part, I knows my shizzle... My preferred environment is OSX because shit just works. I have to use Linux at my customer site and the fact that I can't play a.wav file in amarok or use aplay to play the.wav file while amarok is playing an mp3 is dumb. The fact that I have to futz around with xrandr to get multiple heads to work on my laptop. The fact that I can't turn off my laptop built-in speakers with a headset plugged in (even though windows on the same hardware manages to do it); blah blah blah blah.. Best example I can see yet? I gave my son my old Powerbook G4 and an Ubuntu 10 DVD. He got Ubuntu installed on the PBG4 and got Firefox, Thunderbird, Tuxkart, and so forth installed and running... But the fiddling was just too much... I mean seriously, in order to get the wireless working, he had to download a broadcom firmware bundle from openwrt.org, open an xterm, build a downloaded.c file to extract the correct firmware image from the bundle, install it in/lib/firmware/mumblemumble and reboot just to get wireless working.... He's 9 years old FFS... It took him 2 days of experimentation to get the wireless working. Eventually he decided Linux wasn't for him and reinstalled OSX...

I'm a dedicated linux user for the past 5 years and I'm thinking of dumping it all and going to macs.

Instead I'm a dedicated mac user and I'm thinking of dumping it all and going to linux.;)

I spend way too much time fiddling and screwing around trying to get normal things to work. The other day for example my wife wanted a sound to come on when she got an email in thunderbird. Should be easy, no? Doesn't work on ubuntu without some serious googling/screwing around. Google earth which for some reason vanished from the medibuntu repository... same deal. For some reason the installer set the symlink to point somewhere else. And still the fonts are screwed up, don't know why.

I spend way too much time fiddling and screwing around trying to get normal things to work. And Apple keeps deleting my posts when I whine on their support forums.
The other day for example I wanted to connect my Android phone to my macbook. Should be easy, no? Doesn't work on a mac at all because "RNDIS is a Microsoft protocol".

Or one of my favorites? Kdenlive, a great video editor, can't export to h.264 out of the box on ubuntu because it uses lame so you have to put your own custom export in.

After I switched to linux, kdenlive exported to h.264 out of the box simply by choosing "H.264" from the format list (which included HDV, DV, MPEG2, MPEG4, Xvid, Flash, RealVideo, Theora and Webm).
Of course, that only worked after I enabled the restricted codecs, which aren't "restricted" by any technical reason, but only by the illiberal laws of some countries which sacrifice civil liberties to create monopolies for the profit of big enterprises. Thankfully I don't live in one of them.

Or a recent clean install of Kubuntu 10.10 that left the master mixing channel muted (not through kmix but through alsamixer).

Effectively I have some problems with that %$&%# PulseAudio which keeps eating all of my CPU just to play an MP3:D...

Or the fact that the newest ubuntu amarok packages kill it's ability to talk to my wife's ipod.

...but I'm happy anyway because I switched to a non-Apple mp3 player which doesn't require me to either use a closed, buggy, heavy, alien, limited application or to rely on amateur reverse-engineered libraries just to transfer music on it. It also costed much less and does have a removable battery.

Look, I loves me linux, but I have 3 kids, a wife, a job, and a life.

Look, I love Apple devices, but I have an underpaid IT job, so I can't afford to spend 3x the money to buy underpowered hardware.

I was a Mac user until recently, and an Apple II user before I started with Macs. But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior.

What behavior? Apple clearly stated their terms for the use of the service. The VLC media player developers use a license which is not compatible with those terms. In fact, it was those developers who took the first action [videolan.org]:

Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple simply complied with the notification and took down the app in question. If the developers want their software in Apple's App Store then they should release it under a compatible license. I'm sure they can (and perhaps they have) also try to convince Apple to change the terms of the app store.

Every store has to have rules or it'd be complete anarchy. Sometimes these rules are going to get in the way of someone's idea of how it should all work. This is one of those times. Obviously Apple's rules work for a lot of cases since there are tons of apps, both good and bad, in the app store. There's nothing evil going on here, it's just two entities enforcing the terms of use for their properties.

As interpreted (by me) from the horse's mouth [fsf.org]: the appStore licence says you can only install the software on 5 approved devices, whereas of course the GPL specifically prohibits that type of restriction. Plus, the appStore licence says, "The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party." That means, the software author cannot undercut the appStore restrictions with a less restrictive licence such as the GPL, even if they want to.

INAL, but I wonder why the developer couldn't offer the identical software through separate, more open channels in addition to the appStore, thus satisfying the GPL even though the appStore distribution channel in itself does not satisfy the GPL?

Maybe iPhone users cannot or will not install software that doesn't come from the store? I mean, I'm sure it is possible to do, but the hurdle is too big for them to seriously consider it. Whether that hurdle is technical, or more of an attitude adjustment, or just ignorance is not always obvious.

As interpreted (by me) from the horse's mouth [fsf.org]: the appStore licence says you can only install the software on 5 approved devices, whereas of course the GPL specifically prohibits that type of restriction. Plus, the appStore licence says, "The Usage Rules shall govern your rights with respect to the Products, in addition to any other terms or rules that may have been established between you and another party." That means, the software author cannot undercut the appStore restrictions with a less restrictive licence such as the GPL, even if they want to.

Here is what the app store _actually_ says:

"You acknowledge that: you are purchasing the license to each Third-Party Product from the third-party licensor of that Third-Party Product (the "Application Provider"); Apple is acting as agent for the Application Provider in providing each such Third-Party Product to you; and Apple is not a party to the license between you and the Application Provider with respect to that Third-Party Product. The Application Provider of each Third-Party Product is solely responsible for that Third-Party Product, the content therein, any warranties to the extent that such warranties have not been disclaimed, and any claims that you or any other party may have relating to that Third-Party Product."

So for GPL licensed software, Apple just provides a downloading service to the end user; there is no software license agreement between you and Apple at all. Apple limits what Apple will do for the end user: They are willing to put copies onto five computers owned by one person, but not six. That doesn't limit what the end user is allowed to do. They don't get any further assistance from Apple, so making more copies is a bit more complicated (involves downloading the software, modifying it as you like, recompiling it, possible for another device), but Apple is _not_ restricting what they allow you to do. And you only have to jump through these hoops if you decide to be an ass; if you want to give the same software to all your iPhone owning friends, just tell them where to find it on the store.

There is a little bit of subtleness: Apple sells software licenses on behalf of third parties, and that is what the end user pays for, not the application itself. As GPL allows charging for the software, but not for the license, you can't publish GPL licensed software through the AppStore unless it is free as in free bear.

VLC is a nice player on the desktop but there are far more superior solutions for the iPhone/iPad like AirVideo that isn't swamped in petty GPL politics. Plus the VLC interface on the iPhone was pretty bad. I'd be concerned if it was the only game in town. Otherwise, it's a non-story. This is VLC's loss.

It reminds me of Mozilla's backwards, dogmatic horseshit about supporting "open source" and not getting on the h.264 bandwagon with the rest of the grownups, all the while enabling the extremely user-hostile and proprietary Flash. Now their share is slowly being chipped away by Chrome which suffers from none of the political idiocy that comes with some FOSS projects.

I call bullshit on your claim that Mozilla "enables" Flash in any way. Flash supports the general plugin architecture Mozilla and other browsers inherited from Netscape 4, which predates the existence of Flash entirely. The problem with the h.264 thing is that using it for HTML5 implies that the browser would have to support it natively. Mozilla does NOT support Flash natively. There is absolutely no comparison, your argument is rubbish based on inaccurate, misinformed technical assumptions.

It reminds me of Mozilla's backwards, dogmatic horseshit about supporting "open source" and not getting on the h.264 bandwagon with the rest of the grownups, all the while enabling the extremely user-hostile and proprietary Flash. Now their share is slowly being chipped away by Chrome which suffers from none of the political idiocy that comes with some FOSS projects.

I'm pretty sure it takes an addon for me to get Flash working in my Firefox browser. Mozilla doesn't enable it. The use of H.264, however, would be embedded within Mozilla's code and would require Mozilla to support / license accordingly. I understand that these things are probably difficult to understand as you're still having trouble with what a "grownup" is.

h.264 is going to blow up in everyone's face... you just wait. It's like a dormant cancer that will come alive once it's killed off the other codecs... then the patent holders will reach for YOUR wallet to pay for the "privilege" of using their "IP."

I prefer a dodgy GPL'ed version than a proprietary bunch of nonsense that restricts my freedom to do what I want with what I paid for (my computer...) You can keep your "idiocy free" non-FOSS... I side with the "idiots" who are interested in freedom and choice.

There was a time (ask your parents if you're under 40) when you rented your telephone from the phone company. No different than today you rent your cable box. The only phone that was allowed to plug into the wall jack was the one you rented from the phone company.

Fast forward X years...

There was a time (ask your parents if you're under 40) when you didn't rent your applications from the computer/tablet/smartphone company. No different than today you rent your time machine. The only application that was

What exactly are the details behind this? I understand that Apple's walled garden really does not have to have any reason for what they allow or disallow. But I don't follow what Rémi is alluding too. (Disclaimer: I've not owned any Apple products since my//e and while I have worked on them they are not something I do much with.)

There's a lot of spin here. Apple pulled this at the request of a developer, over concerns of the GPL-licensed components contained in VLC. A lot of folks were surprised that VLC even made it the store, as App Store rules pretty much violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the GPL. Apple was more than happy to keep VLC in the store, but everyone is very happy to spin them as evil yet again. Not that they haven't done some tacky things with App Store takedowns, but really that seems to be more and more a thing of the past.

For more info on the reasons VLC was pulled, check out this Engadget article [engadget.com], just one of many articles out there that reports the truth of the issue.

As a side note, I love VLC; it does a lot on the Mac mini hooked to my HDTV. It's absolutely essential on Linux. But the iOS version was not that great. The one thing I use VLC for more than anything is its network streaming capabilities (remember, it's the Video LAN Client, first and foremost), and this feature didn't make it to the iOS version. So I never used it. Yeah, it's good to have to play videos that QuickTime can't handle, but I've never had occasion to view such videos on my iPhone or iPad. And if I have to use iTunes to load the videos onto my iPhone or iPad, that means the videos are on my computer, where I am more likely to watch them (with the OS X version of VLC, or QuickTime with Perian).

As a side note, I love VLC; it does a lot on the Mac mini hooked to my HDTV. It's absolutely essential on Linux. But the iOS version was not that great.

The main feature of the iOS version was that you could drag and drop pretty much any unconverted/torrented video file to the iphone and VLC would play it.Try that with the default player and report the results please.

You are very wrong IMHO, my non-geek mother now can't view 99% of her video files, and lots of other users will have to go through a very painful process of re-encoding their videos (which can take a lot of time and cpu resources better spent on their casual tasks).

You are very wrong IMHO, my non-geek mother now can't view 99% of her video files, and lots of other users will have to go through a very painful process of re-encoding their videos (which can take a lot of time and cpu resources better spent on their casual tasks).

And why, specifically, is this the case? Is it because you decided to rip all her videos in Theora? Or is it something more innocuous?

I tend to be suspicious of statements like yours, because there are too many things left unstated - so please spell out what formats, exactly, her videos are in.

I like VLC, and use it all the time - but my non-geek mother doesn't know VLC exists. What video files she has came from her video camera; and that exports Quicktime files.

"Release their own player app"? I must be missing something here, but I feel compelled to point out that Apple unsurprisingly ships it with one that supports the same formats that their desktop player supports, basically the ones most commonly available and the ones they sell on iTunes. I don't think Apple has any interest in giving people the ability to play formats beyond those.

It's built into the OS and it's Quicktime(scaled down). Apple won't make a competitor to VLC because VLC played many formats that Apple won't bother supporting due to no hardware acceleration. This is why Apple supports only a small set of codecs and bitrates. The A4 chip in the iPad and iPhone 4 has specific hardware for decoding this codec up to a certain bitrate.

On second thoughts, who do the developers of the VLC app think they are, submitting an app to a store knowing full well that the licensing terms of that store would violate their own licensing terms.

Whether that is the case or not is very much debatable. Apple quite clearly says that if you download third party applications through their store, any license agreement is between you and the developer. Apple provides a free download service, and that service is limited. That has nothing to do with the license agreement between you and the developer.

The app store already is GPLv2 friendly, as long as you don't charge for the app. They amended the licence conditions/ToS after the first GPL run-in before the VLC one to specifically make it friendly to GPLv2.

This is merely them responding to a VLC dev demanding that Apple remove the app from the store - and they complied, and somehow this makes them evil and the masters of some conspiracy to squash OSS.

It's open source isn't it. There's no such thing as "coming real soon now". You can get it NOW if you know how to use git.Will it work? Maybe. Would it be better to wait until the official full release ? Probably, if you want a somewhat bug free version.

The point is, it is available for Android in pre-release and will eventually be available in general release form. It will not (ever) be available for iOS.

The GPL is to blame. It's fundamentally incompatible with the app store's terms of service. The app store terms forbid you from sharing apps you downloaded from it, even if they are free. The GPL does not recognize pointing people to a free download on the app store as the re-distribution that it wants to enforce to be possible.

No, the GPL isn't to blame at all. What is to blame is a developer who has apparently developed a hatred against Apple (which may be related to his employer being Nokia), making legal threats, and claiming that his copyright is infringed.

Apple makes very, very clear that any GPL software in the app store is distributed under the GPL license, and that any legal relationship is between the developers submitting the software and the end user receiving the software. Apple just provides a service to allow users to download software. That service has limitations. And it isn't easy for the end user to distribute further, but it is possible, and Apple doesn't disallow it.

However, the spirit of the GPL software is that anybody should be able to get the source code, adapt it, and use the modified software. Here we have a developer who actively prevents people from doing just that. You can argue all you want about app store rules and walled gardens and so on, but this guy clearly does not want people to have the freedom to modify software that he participated in developing and to make it work on the device that they want it to work on.

What am I missing, if anything? What exactly is it that blocks GPL on the App Store?

The problem is that one of the copyright holders has told Apple that making this application available for downloading would infringe on his copyright.

We have here three different parties: The copyright holder, the developer, and Apple. If Apple is told by the copyright holder that the copy is infringing, then in most cases outside GPL we would assume that the copyright holder should know whether someone has the right to put an application on the store or not. Here we have the rare situation where the qu